Evangelion: The Apotheosis
by raanefea
Summary: First two episodes of a new season
1. A Tear For You/Rats In A Maze

Episode 1  
  
A Tear For You/Rats In A Maze  
  
Opening scene. It's the NERV infirmary, Neural Division... and Ikari Shinji and Sohryu Asuka Langley are both at the lowest point of their respective lives' roller coaster ride.  
  
A pillar of golden light falls from a window, muted by half-drawn white curtains. The pillar envelops the bed, drawing a wide oval of light around the head of Asuka, as she stares into space with eyes full of death, unblinking. The light slides over the sheets and pillows and falls just short of Shinji who is sitting in a chair next to her. The tips of his knees are brightly lit by the edges of the shaft of sunlight; the rest of him, including his face, is in the gray shadow cast by the curtains.  
  
AN ANNOUNCER: (over loudspeaker) Attention all NERV personnel. In connection with the recent state of emergency, siege and invasion drills B3 and C12 will be conducted two hours from now, at 1400 hours. All personnel will prepare for the drills accordingly.  
  
SHINJI: (Internal Monlogue) I can't believe I had the guts to crawl back. It's disgusting. I'm disgusting. Cant believe I ever thought I might... me and her...  
  
He looks over to the bed Asuka is lying on. His eyes, furtive like a pair of thieves, shift to her covers. They are all replaced, but his eyes linger, fixed to where, but a few hours ago...  
  
SHINJI: (I. M. continues) Why didn't I leave? Even if she can't see me... how can I stay here after... that...  
  
He contemplates going out there to face Misato... the void left by the absence of his friends... the void left by the contempt his father holds him in... the void left by Kaworu's death...   
  
SHINJI: (aloud) Rei...  
  
He jerks up from his chair and runs over to Asuka, intending to cry on her shoulders... and suddenly meets her eyes. Two totally empty, dead, blue pools of cornflower-colored glass, glinting up into his eyes like twin shards of a shattered stained-glass window. Facing him, but not looking, not seeing, simply... glinting with the muted reflection of the day-glow lamp. The mindless stare of catatonia encounters the dull agony of depression.  
  
Shinji staggers back, collapses in the chair he sat in before his sudden impulse and begins to weep. His own eyes are shot with blood. Before, he sought sleep as a welcome escape, at any time he could. After Kaworu... In 15 days since that day, he slept maybe enough for one night. As he cries, several more capillaries burst, and the drops of his tears tinge the lightest pink as they run between his fingers.  
  
Finally, unable to take any more of this, Ikari Shinji's head sinks on his chest and he slumps against the back of the chair, slipping down the chute of oblivion.  
  
A nurse and an intern walk in to check on Asuka, conversing tensely:  
  
NURSE: (Laughs nervously. She is new at this, and trying to hide her unease under chatter.) And with the things I've been reading! You know, Dostoyevsky just isn't the best selection for... what's been happening... but it's, you know, like a compulsion. The characters are so intense...  
  
They pause by the bed, the intern abstractedly reading Asuka's charts, the nurse looking at Shinji asleep in his chair.  
  
INTERN: (looks up from chart, marking something with his pen) You don't say... (mutters) bloody drills in two hours... can't ever get that damned report ready...  
  
NURSE: (quietly, she does not want to disturb the boy) Yes, Maruzo-san. Have you read "The Karamazov Brothers"?  
  
INTERN: (moves towards door) Uh-huh  
  
NURSE: (still looking at Shinji) Well, do you recall the question... about paradise?  
  
INTERN: (suddenly attentive) Paradise?  
  
NURSE: (slowly, in a meditative tone) Could we force ourselves to live in bliss -- in a paradise that we knew was purchased with the tears of a single child?  
  
INTERN: (tersely) Luckily, we'll never know. Not even millions of crying children brought any of us any closer to paradise. Not since the dawn of time.  
  
He goes out the door. The nurse follows him.  
  
NURSE: (leaving) I suppose. If we're all miserable, it's easier not to care about others being sacrificed...  
  
Door closes on the Children.   
  
***  
  
A close up of Asuka's face. Her eyes look painted on. Her thoughts are...  
  
ASUKA:(as we zoom into her dead eyes; a voice-over from behind the camera) I want to die. I want to die. I want to die...  
  
***  
  
A close up of Shinji asleep. Zoom into his unconscious face.  
  
SHINJI:(face twitches in a nervous tic; an internal monologue) Kaworu... Rei... no... Asuka... I'm sorry...  
  
***  
  
Asuka's unseeing eyes, a zoom inside.  
  
We see the inside of Asuka's mentalscape. A black, blasted plain, cracked in the middle and oozing putrid blood. Asuka is hanging by her black-gore-dripping guts from a gibbet sticking up like a black needle. An old friend shares the perch with her.  
  
The crimson angles-and-planes shape of her Unit-02 is melded into the gibbet as an ingrown p-a-r-t of it, its scarlet carapace stained and splattered with a foul onyx slick that is one with the needle's substance. The Eva's parts seem to be flowing into the gibbet needle's blackness, long legs standing at "attention" with heels locked together treading empty air at a height half again that of the Evangelion. Its arms and shoulder guards, yanked out of their places in the EVA's joints and still dripping with gore, are crossed below Asuka's swinging feet like a trophy on a pole, the EVA's head, active and peeping about curiously, is sticking out of the middle of the needle's tapering point above Asuka's, craning down and looking into her cringing face with a savage glee. The EVA's four orange-flaring eyes swivel to look at her as if she was something you scrape off the sole of your shoe. The metal-plate armoring its mouth bends as the Eva's limbs curl in a mordant sneer, then something hot and searing singes the flesh of her cheek to the bone as she realizes that Unit-02 just spat on its unworthy pilot.  
  
Asuka's hands are tipped with razors as she incessantly, desperately tries to claw out her eyes, but despite the agony of the razors slashing them to a bloody pulp, she can still see.  
  
ASUKA:(voiceover) I am dead. Why don't I die! I must be dead! Why can't I die!   
I should be dead. I must die! I want to die! I want to die!  
  
Suddenly the view changes. It is now apparently the inside of an immense bottle of a blue material that seems neither glass nor plastic but something totally alien. A man in formal business attire is running on all fours over the walls of the blue stuff like an insect trapped in a glass.  
  
***  
  
Shinji's sleeping face, a zoom as he moans without awakening.  
  
The inside of Shinji's dreamscape. We are staring into a huge close-up of Asuka's face. It is her face, but it is no longer the face of a human. Whereas in his waking world, her face was dead and void of all reaction, now it is a contorted inhuman grimace of pain and hatred, animated by a snarling beast that has nothing to do with a human soul. The view pull back and we see that she is in her entry plug, dressed in a plugsuit.  
  
Shinji looks down to discover that he is in his plugsuit as well. He is apparently at the controls of EVA Unit-01.  
  
GENDO'S VOICE:(over the comm channel) I see you are deployed, pilot Ikari. You will now proceed to neutralize the rampaging Unit.  
  
MISATO'S VOICE:(tinged with the familiar rhythms of powerless compassion, but ever determined like a proper officer at her post) Yes, Shinji, we have no choice. You must destroy her, Shinji. It's not your fault, you didn't choose this.  
  
SHINJI:(as he realizes all his decisions have already been made for him and he is only left to go through the motions) No... no... it can't be...  
  
***  
  
Asuka's eyes.  
  
Back in Asuka's head, she stares at the man in the huge bottle, surprise cutting through agony.  
  
THE MAN:(screams out an endless ocean of guilt and agony) No! Atsaro! I'm sorry! I can change! I can change! (An inarticulate scream. He starts bashing his head and arms against the wall, still screaming)  
  
Asuka stares, dumbfounded, as a writhing, black and yellow vermiform tentacle reaches into the bottle, some eerily glowing protrusions swelling up out of it. Some of these protrusions begin to glow, off-color shades of magenta, cinnabar, neon pink, and electric white, blinking in response to each other as if communicating in semaphore.   
  
***  
  
Shinji's face.  
  
In his dream, Shinji is startled as the entry plug's controls begin to move on their own. With deadly, ponderous inevitability, Unit-01 plods forward towards its intended prey. Shinji's heart jolts with the searing, paralyzing, icy touch of realization, as it hits him what the Evangelion is about to do -- again. He can feel the precise moment when his heart tears like rotting cloth and the shreds plummet down an icy chute of pain.  
  
SHINJI:(with the voice of the eternally damned) NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  
  
***  
  
Asuka's eyes.  
  
A new... appendage enters through the blue walls of the container in Asuka's vision. It resembles nothing on Earth so much as a bizarre cross between an antler and a feathered bird's wing, covered with softly humming cyan cactus spines. It had articulated joints that looked like either a slinkie or a 3-D model of a biomolecule, and it shot out pastel-hued laser pulses from its translucent central core.  
  
One of such pulses hits the forehead of the agony-wracked writhing heap of madness and torment scuttling along the softly glowing dusky blue walls, and the man rolled down the opaque smoothness precisely like an insect suffering a direct hit from a can of "Black Flag". After tumbling down a few spans, he seemed to stick to the wall again, held apparently by surface tension like a raindrop in Asuka's waking world.  
  
Raising a human head with the expression of a vivisected animal on it, the man shrieks into the void above him, which seems to listen with amused fascination.  
  
THE MAN:(suddenly discovering that he only thought he knew true damnation before) NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! It was I... I killed them... left her to the rats... HOW?????? HOOOOOWW?!?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  
  
***  
  
Shinji's face.  
  
SHINJI:( tugs at controls uselessly, watching his EVA pounce on Asuka's Unit-02 like a snake of a hatchling chick) Stop! No! You can't!!! Asuka, run! Save yourself!  
  
BEAST-ASUKA:(Yawps ferociously, mind consumed with fury and agony) GraAAAAAAAAAAAAArGH!!!!!! Die, you glob of squawking putrid crawling compost!  
  
A crimson mad beast, Unit-02 leaps at Unit-01. The purple-green harbringer of death stands steady as a rock, taking the impact of the crimson horror's berserk tackle. With the legerdemain of a practiced juggler, the sinister purple shadow twists in a ballet-like pirouette, deftly plucking the silvery cylinder of the entry plug from the armor-scaled back of the blood-hued hellion that is simultaneously smashing its head to a purple-blotted pink-black pulp. As the entry plug is removed, Asuka's EVA drops to the ground, inert and contorted into a twisted pose of impotent fury like a monstrous insect dried up between a pair of twin window frames. It splashes into the churned mud with a heavy thud of failure as the head of Unit-01 reforms from the mashed gore left by its victim's flailing claws. Without its armor plating it looks like what it is - a ravenous, soulless beast. The hand in armor plate glove rises, holding Asuka's entry plug like a candy bar.  
  
***  
  
Shift to directly inside Asuka's vision. The antler-like appendage reaches out again, and the zumming hum of its airy cactusoid spines changes, as if it is receiving a different station. The edges of its antler-like tines, vicious weapons with smooth organically flowing curves and planes, shining like veined jade and whimsical like sea-sculpted driftwood, seem to writhe and bud new awl-like prongs, stretching hypnotically toward the man in the bottle, whose tongue is hanging t-h-r-o-u-g-h his teeth's gaps now, shredded to gore-and-froth-dripping ribbons. Inarticulate moans gurgle their way past the man's clenched jaws, like the sounds of a hunted animal afraid to make a sound but unable to control the pain. The outlandish appendage swings down...   
  
***  
  
Shift to Shinji, as he sees Unit-01's aubergine fist, bloated with darkness like one fist-shaped swollen bruise, reach up, holding its fallen crimson brother's entry plug. Up... up... as Shinji, convulsing in his LCL from the revelatory experience of feeling Unit-01's head get pulped and regenerate just as vividly as he would feel his own, simultaneously feels the newly re-grown head bend forward, feels "his" jaws ponderously opening like the jagged wheels of a medieval torture device creaking at their hinges as they grind away their dark purpose... and at that precise moment he sees Asuka's face appear once more on his comm screen!  
  
ASUKA:(looks him in the eye, her face is no longer bestial, her eyes now filled with that merciless contempt that only a human and a hero can give to Death in the end moments) Go ahead you worm! That's all you're ever good for, sitting there moaning while the rest of us die, isn't it? Isn't it?!  
  
Shinji tries to answer her, but his jaws only move in a repulsive tearing motion as Unit-01's own slavering maw crunches Asuka's entry plug like a stalk of celery. Shinji tries to scream, but instead his jaws move in a grinding, chewing, inexorable rhythm as he can vividly t-a-s-t-e Asuka's limbs and innards getting masticated to a bloody glop by Unit-01's gargantuan molars.  
  
***  
  
Asuka's vision. Her view expands suddenly, encompassing the bottle where the man is being tortured, two beings standing outside the bottle, looking like they have been designed by a committee of Bosch, Escher and Van Gogh, after watching microbiology slides on crack. Weird geometric patterns flash on their various surfaces as they apparently discussing better ways to create one man's personal hell.  
  
Behind that bottle, there is a field, covered with infinite billions of them. Tall towers of softly glowing blue material, each slightly... out of focus somehow when seen next to the others, as if not quite in spatio-temporal sync with its neighbors. Each held a human, locked away, isolated it his or her own little pocket chibi-universe. Each such pocket held an eternal infinity of hell.  
  
ASUKA:(murmurs) Am I stuck in one of those things and can't see it? (Frowns.) Ach, scheisse!  
  
She peers into the distance.  
  
ASUKA: (whimpers, then bites lip to stifle it) Misato? K-Kaji? What are they doing to you?  
  
Her view zooms in, in such a way that it is impossible to tell, is her field of vision charging forward or are surrounding bottles rapidly streaking back. Finally all her senses are riveted on a particular bluish container, glowing amid the black plain and gray sky like a soft fluorescent lamp powered by the burning of a damned soul. And within the bottle's towering immensity, all her senses are riveted on one tiny speck.  
  
Misato is collapsed, fallen to her knees, on her bottle's wall. She is crushed, utterly shattered beyond any hope of relief or melioration. Pink foam drips from her lips and nose.  
  
MISATO:(heartbroken, not moaning but rather weeping verbally, questioning the dead in a gentle, plaintive voice) Why, Asuka, Shinji, why? You were like my own to me... I did what I could... I did, I swear! Why... could it not be enough? Maybe if I drank less... wasted less time hanging on to that bloodsucker Gendo's every word... Kaji... if I wasted less time on Kaji, maybe Asuka wouldn't have snapped! If I talked to them more, instead of my stupid teasing... I probably treated Pen Pen better...   
  
***  
  
Shinji's view. Asuka has been eaten, but her screams can still be heard. Shinji realizes they are coming from inside him. He sinks his fingernails into his own throat, trying to rip it out. The veins burst, and his hands yank the esophagus, stretching it like white putty.  
  
***  
  
In her own vision, Asuka sees Shinji in a bottle, hands in his own gore up to elbows. He is trying to scream, but his windpipe has long been broken, though he seems to be as healthy as ever.  
  
ASUKA:(gulps) I can't believe it. Him? This is like watching a kitten being tortured! Take him out of his Eva and he's helpless! These... Angels, whatever they are, are using cosmic powers to torture the one most pitiful loser ever produced by humanity!  
  
A MYSTERIOUS VOICE(rings in her ears suddenly) Touched to the quick now, are we?  
  
ASUKA:(seething to the point that she doesn't notice she is apparently addressing an auditory hallucination) Damn right! It's... abscheulich... having to watch this! That idiot is messed up enough, he doesn't need this!  
  
THE VOICE:(seems to sound from everywhere at once) Want to stop it, you little ball of misspent spunk? Will you even try? Do you even have the guts left for this much? It seems like you ran out the moment one of the lesser sparrows held a mirror up to you!  
  
***  
  
Shinji, still chocking on the warm salt taste of mashed Asuka, hears his father's voice come from the entry plug comm set.  
  
GENDO'S VOICE:(smug) Excellent performance, Pilot Ikari. I will enter a commendation in your records. (slightly muffled, but still audible) Oh, security? Take away Major Katsuragi, she seems a little too... distraught... to remain on bridge.  
  
Shinji can feel his soul die inside him, like a flower dipped in toxic fecal matter. He tries to chock himself unconscious, but with his windpipe already crushed, what more can he do? His hands yank, trapped in the putty of his esophagus like fly claws on sticky paper.  
  
***  
  
Asuka is almost relieved. Attacks by others are not going to phase her, not after facing down something that slashes her arms off and then amputates her head. It's the horror that broods and swarms within her soul like a seething mass of scorpions, that she can't face. But now she can finally let some of that boiling darkness fly full blast in a verbal exchange!  
  
ASUKA:(doubtfully) Do I know you, you skulking rat? What, you've been splattered all over the landscape, or are you just afraid I'll see your ugly puss?  
  
VOICE:(admiration evident) That's the spirit, Asuka. You truly are your mother's daughter, despite all your trials.  
  
ASUKA:(with a spare-me-the-cheap-Vader-act attitude) Lemme guess. YOUUUUUUU ARRRRRRRE MUH-Y MOTHTHTHTHRRRRRRR?  
  
VOICE:(dodging subject and not bothering to hide it) Never mind who I am. You know the way to stop this. Do you have what it takes to get back into that?  
  
Noise like gnashing teeth makes the tormented girl's head jerk upwards. As she lifts her razor-mutilated face, empty eye sockets stare into the grinning visage of Unit-02, looking like what Jeffrey Dahmer found on the other side of the tunnel of light, at least if afterlife was made to our order.  
  
Unit-02 snaps its teeth in Asuka's direction like a lunging cobra.  
  
ASUKA:(she'll be damned if she shows A HINT of just h-o-w shitless she is at the moment) Yeah, I saw a dog snap like that once when I was a kid! Of course that was the post-Schlag years, so we made s-o-u-p outta him! You wait till I'm up there, then we'll see if it's in your best interests to be nice and do tricks when I tell you!  
  
Unit-02 shudders and starts to melt. The gibbet-needle follows.  
  
ASUKA:(realization dawning) That wasn't my Unit-02! Just some cheap mockup you threw together to test me! Hey, whoever you are! You better hide, 'cause when I find you, I'm gonna have your mangy hide off all the way down to your freakshow-reject's skeleton, ya hear me?  
  
As she screams, the scene fades. A tunnel of light seems to rush up and swallow her.  
  
***  
  
It is some hours after Shinji passed out. The shaft of sunlight has moved from Asuka's face to her legs. Other than that, time seems to have stood still for the little isolated room, as it is walled off from the turmoil of the GeoFront under siege.  
  
(A death rattle, the sound of the dying's last breath in a constricting throat, sounds through the room)  
  
SHINJI:(eyes still shut) AAASUKAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!  
  
Shinji jerks awake in the chair, his shirt soaked with gelid sweat. His head lifts, revealing bloodshot eyes. It sways in the air; Shinji is obviously half-comatose himself.  
  
SHINJI: ?????? (mutters, teeth chattering) I'll kill myself before I sleep again... any torture is better... Asuka... I'm... sorry...  
  
The door is moving slightly, as if something swung it half-open and it has not yet stopped in its arc.  
  
SHINJI: (teeth rattling, head darts around) Uh... is...   
  
A... presence passes down from toward the bed. As Shinji squints at it, all he can make out is a shimmer in the air, a moving spot in which the subdued light from the fluorescent lamps bends as if passing through perfectly clear water. As nearly invisible distortion moves past Shinji in his chair, he hears the death rattle again, like the final chocking gasp of a shooting victim.  
  
SHINJI: W-what... Hello?  
  
The mysterious mirage stops before Asuka's bed and, as it stops its progress, suddenly outlines into a concrete almost-silhouette, transparent as glass but no longer blurred by motion. If an observer squints wrong, the minimalist mirage becomes invisible. Shinji happens to be squinting just right.  
  
As he stares in bewilderment, Ikari Shinji sees a 4-meter tall gaunt outline that seems to appear and vanish every time a chance breeze from the air conditioner stirs the curtains a hairsbreadth. It is vaguely humanoid, but less bulky and sharp-angled than an EVA. As it bends its head and stretches a 75% invisible arm - or rather a vague hint of an arm -- toward Asuka's dead-eyed face, the death-rattle sound groans out again, like a mocking prophesy.  
  
The apparition keeps blinking in and out of visibility. Its phantom hand, like a trick of the light, less distinct than the dust motes in the sunlight, darts forward and blurs into a shapeless airy streak in its rush towards the girl's forehead. Almost simultaneously, the blur suddenly resolves into near-precise outlines of fingers and these in turn stretch into tapering talons ready to pierce living flesh. But instead, the hand hovers, stopping short of completing the stab, claws flexing to touch the pale skin in a ghastly satanic benediction. Head bowed, the whole mirage looks like a transparent premonition of a mourner at a funeral, or perhaps a victor in a duel administering the coup de grace.  
  
SHINJI:(terrified but hoarse from weeks of crying) What... what are you doing to her?!  
  
His voice breaks in a fit of coughing.  
  
A sigil flashes silver and crimson on Asuka's forehead, vanishing too quick to make out.  
  
Her nostrils flare, and simultaneously, another death rattle is heard.  
  
SHINJI:(hands doing the "fist tic", jumps from his chair and charges the creature) Get away! Don't you touch her, you... huh?  
  
The apparition vanishes. Shinji, like a dizzy, pencil-thin juggernaut, rams straight through the place where he thought he saw it - now no longer sure it was ever there at all. He stumbles, flailing his arms so as not to fall over on Asuka's bed.  
  
Behind his back, midway between him and the door, something passes through the air that the eye can't quite focus on - as if some miniscule patches of something 95% invisible blink in and out of existence. Shinji, focused on nothing but a pitiful effort at regaining his balance, cannot see it.  
  
At the door, however, the unresolvable spots suddenly re-outline as before by the bed, but now only the being's head is visible, a face like a quicksilver mask appearing to float on nothing but a rapidly dissipating air distortion. The face is perfectly featureless, eyeless and mouth-less, with its nose not a feature in itself but rather a natural culmination of the sharp angular planes of its forehead and cheekbones. It is like nothing as much as a smooth, aerodynamic, face-shaped missile aimed directly at the two children.  
  
The creature's face jerks in the air, its ghostly outlines jagging like lines on the screen of a TV getting static. It vanishes.  
  
Suddenly, a very human tear impacts on the linoleum floor beneath the vanished head.  
  
The door creaks shut. Shinji jerks around to follow the sound.  
  
SHINJI:(past all care) Who are you? What have you done to Asuka? Come out you monster! Stop... (he sinks to his knees, only his hand on the bed's rim stopping him from collapsing completely) torturing... me...  
  
At that moment, he is disturbed by another sound. But that one does not come from any ghostly apparition.  
  
ASUKA:(half-conscious) Shinji...  
  
Shinji's head is beginning to feel like a weathervane in a twister as he snaps it over to Asuka and sees that she is still far from conscious. On the other hand, the dead stare of catatonia appears to be replaced with a woozy state, as if the girl is just waking up after having an appendix out.  
  
SHINJI(Internal Monologue) She called my name waking up! If she only knew...  
  
ASUKA: (still in la-la land) take your damn fingers off my knee or I'm getting a pair of garden shears with your crotch's name on them...  
  
Shinji, who had been - by pure accident -- brushing against her knee as he held on to the bed to keep his balance, yanks himself to his feet, jerking his hand away like Asuka was made of untarnished plutonium.  
  
ASUKA:(blinking at the sunlight) Dammit, not only am I not dead, I'm hungry too... (Her forehead and neck are shining with sweat beads. Still blinking, she apparently questions the ceiling) Was that the UberChicken I heard scream earlier?  
  
She pouts, staring at the ceiling, while off to the side, Shinji passes out on the floor.  
  
MISATO(walks in) Shinji-kun... look, I brought some supper... (nearly drops it as she takes in the tableau of Shinji plastered over the linoleum and a confused Asuka sitting up in bed. She does not q-u-i-t-e drop the tray she is carrying.)  
  
ASUKA(takes in the tableau from her POV) What? I didn't do it.  
  
  
Next Episode: Who is the mystery killer that disembowels Akagi Ritsuko? What about the one trying to do put a bullet in Ibuki Maya? And who is the mysterious woman holding Commander Ikari at gunpoint? And why are the MAGI acting so weird? See NERV try to survive as Tokyo-3 and the GeoFront come under siege by the Japanese Strategic Self Defense Forces... while another battle for survival rages within its corridors.  
  
Also, see Asuka on her way to recovery from the horror she lived through. See Misato try her best to help her. See Shinji... well, he should be happy to have Asuka back, but he'll have to remind himself of that... a lot. All in the next episode of Evangelion: The Apotheosis!  
  
  
  



	2. A Worm In The Root, A Tiger In The Parlo...

Episode 2  
  
A Worm In The Root, A Tiger In The Parlor/ Lifeboat Politics  
  
After a clip show from the previous episode, a caption appears over the image of the   
GeoFront, reading:  
  
(A few hours earlier…)  
  
Shift to the bridge. Aoba, Hyuga, Ibuki Maya, and a swarm of techs we don't know   
feverishly examine printouts and diagrams, calling out names of operations and code   
words for results, designations and descriptions, a mass of semi-raw data like globs of   
masticated nourishment that this churning flood of human and electronic enzymes must   
catalyze and digest to transform into sustenance for the Titan that is NERV.  
  
Fuyutsuki is standing on the Commander's dais, peering towards the screen like a hawk   
pretending nearsightedness, but fooling no one. He is still as a statue of a guardian god,   
but seems to tense with energy as if resisting an impulse to bounce up and down on his   
toes. In one hand, he holds a cell phone, as if expecting some vital call at any moment.  
  
GENDO:(with a voice that does not, even slightly, reflect the dizzy combination of   
exhilaration and exhaustion that Fuyutsuki knows he is feeling right now) Rei is almost   
ready. Status?  
  
He speaks the last word with an expression that the aforementioned status better have a   
v-e-r-y good explanation for itself, or it is in shortly going to land in some seriously hot   
water. Asuka herself would have to make a strenuous effort to sound that menacing,   
though she is probably the one person on this Earth who could top it.  
  
FUYUTSUKI:(shakes head sadly) Nothing to open the champagne about. We are doing   
our best but… The MAGI-level machines of all the world are arrayed against us.   
Matsushiro must be truly stirred up by whatever the old men saw fit to drop on them.  
  
MAYA:(behind him, in the background, voice pealing with urgency) Sir! I don't see how   
our protocols can hold them off any longer!  
  
FUYUTSUKI:(resigned) I think I know where this is going.  
  
GENDO:(conciliatory) It is foolish to bother with acquiring a tool, if one does not use it.  
  
FUYUTSUKI:(doubtful) A tool… Are you that certain that tool won't turn in your hand,   
Ikari?  
  
GENDO:(smirk) Reasonably certain. This one took too much pride in her… function…   
to fail when it counts. She should last this day at least, and afterwards… none of it shall   
matter.  
  
FUYUTSUKI:(face set with determination) One way or the other… (raises voice so he   
can be heard in the ordered din of the desperate electronic combat enveloping the   
bridge) Lieutenant Ibuki! Proceed to holding cell block number 3, cell 19E. I believe   
you will find a friend there you'll be glad to meet. Bring her to the bridge with all   
possible celerity.  
  
MAYA:(breathless) Hai!  
  
She runs out.  
  
They watch the bridge bustle in silence for a while.  
  
GENDO:(musingly) All tools, honed to last one all-important day… We must not fail,   
Fuyutsuki.  
  
FUYUTSUKI:(looks at bustle around him) All of these people, each born… nurtured…   
trained… All fitted together to carry out one all-important function  
  
GENDO:(implacably) Yes. Rei must have time to play her part  
  
Gendo's cell phone rings. He holds it up and looks at the "line" readout.  
  
GENDO:(does not want to show how nonplussed he is) That is peculiar…  
  
***  
  
Ibuki Maya follows a guard through sterile, gray corridors, with a spot of color coding   
beneath a garish red NERV logo forming the only splay of color on lifelessly blank walls.   
She looks around her at the oppressing emptiness and shivers slightly.  
  
The Section Three guard accompanying her is either feeling really damn lonely, or feels   
it his duty to entertain the lovely lady with gallant chitchat.  
  
THE GUARD: Yeah, I know what you mean, Lieutenant. This is a piece of work, these   
blocks… I'm guessing they're made this cheerful with a reason – to break the "guests" of   
all bad habits faster. A two-week ticket here is like a five-year term anywhere else, even   
in those severe-regiment places. (Pauses, apparently the idea gives even his denial-  
trained sensibility the creeps) You know, Lieutenant… Sometimes, I think that in here,   
they… no longer feel they're alive anymore…  
  
MAYA:(her voice breaking) How… how can you stand working here?  
  
GUARD:(ever the charmer) What, drop it and miss the pay-and-a-half?  
  
He tries to laugh it off, but even Maya, who is not precisely Dr Freud, can tell that the   
hours spent in this section have not passed by traceless – the guy seems to s-w-e-a-t   
tightly repressed jitters!  
  
GUARD:(tugs at his collar like his neck is itching) Naahhh, my only prob… lem with,   
with this place is, you can't get any baseball games here. Radio isolation. Guess the   
Commander wants us to pay attention, no?  
  
Maya gives him a helpful smile clearly indicating two not-very-contradictory emotions:   
"Poor baby, it's terrible what they make you go through…" and "Sorry buddy – nice   
smile, but I haven't the time to hold your hand while you recover your macho-macho-  
manliness."  
  
GUARD:(badly flustered, face slightly flushed) Uh, well, where does the time fly,   
Lieutenant… We're already here… heh, heh…  
  
He sweeps his entrance card through, punches in a complex code, and lets a thing that   
looks like a crucified R2D2 take his retinal scan. Maya watches with an expression that   
says without words "What, no rectal probe? What lack of proper protocol!"  
  
***  
  
GENDO:(into the cell phone) What's your game this time, Lorentz? Did you really think   
I would not know you've tapped into my secure lines?  
  
Camera sweeps back and we see he is taking this call in his office. Apparently this is   
something for which he needs privacy, even from Fuyutsuki.  
  
VOICE FROM PHONE:(precise to the point it seems barely human) Take it or leave it   
Ikari, but I suggest you take it. The protocols, codes and frequencies you need to counter   
Tokyo-2's electronic blanket are coming into your phone's DMU as I speak. Use them,   
and you'll be tapping into t-h-e-i-r lines.  
  
GENDO:(hanging up) Your generosity astounds me.  
  
***  
  
GUARD:(makes a sweeping bow, flourishing an imaginary cape) Come right in, Lieu…  
  
Maya screams. The guard turns to look and…  
  
GUARD:(desperately hitting a comm. button on a wall terminal) Hiuzi, I need a Rapid   
Response team here, fast, with a medic! Tell'em it's an emergency! YES, it IS an   
emergency we've got…  
  
Maya stumbles deeper into the room and the guard's voice melts away into the   
background as her vision shimmers like a mirage. Through underwater-like distortion,   
she can see the inside of this gray-plane box for the body and soul.  
  
… and see the spread-eagled form of Akagi Ritsuko, sprawled across the floor by her cot,   
seeming to float atop a puddle of dark red color. More red, thick wetness spouts in weak   
periodic bursts from her body cavity, opened like an envelope, edges peeled back like   
flaps of carefully carved roast beef that seems somehow just t-o-o rare… Various   
pancreas, kidneys, a lung, long winding liverwurst shapes of gut lie, abandoned in this   
mess like toys thrown into peculiar red mud by a careless child. Sometimes they blow   
bubbles and q-u-i-v-e-r slightly, as if being thrown there jerked some hidden spring loose.  
  
MAYA: (at a loss, torn between her desire to just stick it back in, make it better   
somehow, and the knowledge that disturbing the critically wounded is a bad idea) Akagi-  
sempai, it will be better… please, Akagi-sempai just… rest easy… and, and, there'll be   
people to come and help…  
  
She stands on her knees over Ritsuko's head, trying to reassure herself by talking to her   
mentor. As she sways, near passing out from sheer shock, something on a wall of   
Ritsuko's cell catches her attention. A bolt of lightning seems to freeze her spine to   
absolute zero as she registers what it was.  
  
It is quite an impressive piece of graphic design, done by someone with an obvious taste   
and excellent hand-eye coordination combined with superior artistic sensibility. Dure,   
perhaps. Or even Da Vinci. Provided whoever it was had recently developed rabies.  
  
A phoenix, wings outspread in the crimson sweep of gory splashes, rose from crimson   
ashes smoldering on the bottom of the wall, dripping bloody rivulet-pinions in a grand   
flourish. The phoenix's eye, done by enclosing a drop of the viscous burgundy near-  
blackness between two gracefully intersecting curves of bright crimson, seems to hold   
Maya's eye with its mocking gleam.  
  
Maya's eyes focus enough to make out what appear to be tiny chunks of her mentor's…   
liver, or lung, or something nasty, anyway… stuck here and there into the artwork. Maya   
was trained as a computer expert, not a polymath like Ritsuko, and at the moment, her   
thoughts are not tending towards tissue analysis anyway.  
  
MAYA:(gritting teeth) I am… not going to faint. Akagi-sempai needs… me. I am not…  
  
Some noise from the corner of the cell behind her  
  
GUARD:(desperate to DO something against whatever is causing the first girl to smile at   
him this year such horrible pain) What the hell? Is anyone hiding… (throws something)   
Lieutenant, look away!  
  
***  
  
Caption:  
  
(Some minutes later)  
  
GENDO:(in office, looking at a readout on his laptop, hits a button on his desk)   
Commander to Bridge. Attention Lieutenant Aoba. Attention Lieutenant Hyuga.  
  
A shot of the bridge as first Hyuga, then Aoba raise their cell phones and listen.  
  
GENDO:(goes on) An intel source I must consider suspect has forwarded to me the codes   
NERV will need to intercept elintel from Tokyo-2's forces. Considering the dire   
situation we find ourselves in, you are ordered to use the codes…  
  
A shot of the duo's faces. Hyuga is worried, Aoba is stoically unshaken as he   
contemplates the risk. His face looks like something Kurosawa would film – a kamikaze   
in the last seconds before battle run.  
  
GENDO:(voiceover while a montage of bridge shots is run) … by routing our   
transmissions through one of our reserve OS's, taking previous care to disconnect every   
connection to the MAGI.  
  
FUYUTSUKI:(wathes the bridge explode into a new fever pitch of activity) With you, it's   
never something I'd expect, is it, Ikari?  
  
Gendo's lips barely have time to form a smirk before some noise startles him.  
  
***  
  
Caption:  
  
(Some minutes earlier)  
  
There is a sudden screech as of car brakes on sheet metal, and simultaneously, a glare   
like a million suns stuffed in the space of a nutshell erupts in the formerly-shadowed   
corner of the little holding cell. Maya's training has kicked in just in time, so she turns   
her head away before her conscious mind has time to register the guard's yell. But the   
guard himself, his retinas protected by his standard-issue helmet visor can distinctly make   
out some… outline appears in the suddenly-lit holding cell, several sharp edges that   
somehow give the impression of a lanky leaping figure that streaks across the field of   
white light, bounces off the wall, and vanishes in mid-flight, as if some chameleon device   
took that split-second to adjust to the incandescent explosion.  
  
GUARD:(as eloquent as anyone can be when gut-punched into the wall of the corridor   
opposite the holding cell) OOOOOFFFF!  
  
There are shots fired in the outer corridor, as the arriving Rapid Response team gets its   
clock cleaned by an invisible opponent charging through them. They did not expect   
anything, and so get no chance to use another incandescent grenade.  
  
A MEDIC(rushing up to the guard) Can you talk? What's going on here, in the name of   
all the kamis there are?!  
  
The guard has, for once, fallen silent. His helmet protected his brains from any further   
scrambling, but his diaphragm wasn't so lucky. No air in his lungs to talk with. It is all   
he can do to raise a weak hand and point in the direction of the holding cell.  
  
The Medic looks into the open door… and rushes in, desperately screaming into a cell   
phone. Maya's head is swimming, she can make out fragments about organ banks, blood   
transfusions and operating rooms, but can't string them together. The devastated young   
woman can barely push feeble attempts at clarification past her bloodless lips.  
  
MAYA: It… there was a noise… bird… Akagi-sempai  
  
MEDIC:(sweating bullets and working with the speed of a jazz pianist and the precision   
of a bomb squad expert as she tries to fit organs and stitch arteries back together) Don't   
worry, Lieutenant. Since it appears to have happened only a minute or two ago… I'm   
sure Iguwazi-sensei will save her… He was the world authority on hear transplants   
before he joined NERV, you know. (She never ceases working while she talks, her   
expertise evident.)  
  
The rest of the Rapid Response team rush in, taking positions to cover every inch of the   
holding cell's small space. They do give space to Maya and the medic, though, careful   
not to interrupt the painstaking work.  
  
She and several other Rapid Response people lift Ritsuko on a stretcher and carry her   
out, careful not to shake a lung loose.  
  
The RR team's commander and Maya are running alongside the stretcher, trying to   
make sense of what the hell just took place.  
  
RR LEADER:(extremely professional, even after his sudden encounter with the ceiling as   
the mystery assailant rammed through him) We never saw a thing.(to the cell guard)   
You tried to use an incandescent to smoke'im out?  
  
GUARD:(still wheezing from his gut punch, trying hard to keep up) Yes, sir… It (huff,   
puff) sorta took time to adapt to the flash, so I could see it for sec there… lotsa good it did   
me, too.  
  
RR LEADER:(unflappable) Yes, it seems to be proving itself quite an adversary… get   
into a locked cell, escape past a team of reaction experts… (his mask of professionalism   
slips for a brief instant, in what is for him a desperate cri de coeur) Personally, I would   
suggest you have the MAGI scan the GeoFront for a Blue Pattern.  
  
MAYA:(brain kicking in to overcome body's attempts to go into shock and never come   
out) … and that thing must have done it seconds before we entered, hiding in the shadow!   
It got away right past us! That bird on the was w-a-s freshly… (gulp) painted… (Here   
she finally registers what the RR Leader has been saying) Blue Pattern? I doubt it,   
Sergeant. This… this Angel horror is supposed to be over for now… at least that's what I   
heard… although it could be… did I hear her refer to a heart… t-t… heart…  
  
RR LEADER:(trying to recover lost professionalism) Outside my scope, Lieutenant.   
They do know their business at the Infirmary, though.  
  
A blur of stairways and elevators, as Maya focuses on Akagi Ritsuko's bloodstained   
comatose face lolling against a stretcher pillow. Her fingers are squeezing the metal   
frame of the stretcher in a bloodless grip as it rolls down the final stretch of hallway.  
  
MEDIC:(running opposite Maya on other side of stretcher) We're here, we're almost   
here! They tell me the op room's been prepped, we can pull her through! We're   
professionals, we've t-trained for this, we can…  
  
A shot rings out. Maya lets go of the stretcher from sheer shock staggering back.   
Almost immediately response shots are heard as the RR Team returns fire. Maya can see   
a dark-clad figure run forward, apparently unfazed by numerous body shots it takes.  
  
MAYA:(dizzily, I. M.) Am I shot? … (aloud) Oh, Kami-sama, Akagi-sempai!  
  
She has time for a glimpse of a man on the floor tiles, his head shot nearly off his neck,   
his throat a mess of gore. Dimly she recognizes that it's the holding cell guard who tried   
so desperately to be charming on their walk to discover the horror awaiting them.  
  
MAYA:(realization dawns, I. M.) It was meant for me… he took a bullet that was flying   
towards me…  
  
A soldier is shoved aside and Maya finds herself staring down a pistol muzzle. The   
mystery assassin is wearing black bulletproof body suit and helmet, but the helmet's visor   
is transparent. Maya just has time to realize that the face she sees in the clear faceguard   
is not a reflection.  
  
MAYA:(screams) Me?!?!!!!?  
  
An armor-piercing shot takes her doppelganger down from the left. She crumples like a   
cardboard cutout whose base suddenly vanished, her fibroceramic helmet clanging on   
floor linoleum with an incongruously bell-like chime. Maya suddenly remembers she   
had a service pistol along all this time, fingers it uncertainly, then visibly decides that   
pulling it out would be really dumb and just lets go.  
  
MAYA:(bending over the doppelganger, who obviously is not long for this world) Who-  
who ARE you? Why did you want to do this? Did you attack Akagi-hakase?  
  
DOPPEL-MAYA:(struggling to speak) The pit… the pit opening… the abyss… no, not   
the dreams!  
  
MAYA:(pouts in confusion) Huh?! Pay attention, you… thing… creature… whatever!  
  
DOPPEL-MAYA:(eyes suddenly focusing) You!? Ibuki Maya! I must kill you, kill, kill   
Ibuki Maya, kill Ibuki Maya, have to kill her, you… hafta kill or can't you tell… the   
dreams… oh… (dies)  
  
MAYA:(getting up, with all the sarcasm she can muster in her innocent soul) Inter…   
esting…  
  
***  
  
Maya, in surgical scrubs and gown, watches doctors gently lay her mentor's mangled   
body on the operating table. A surgeon walks in from the room nearby.  
  
THE SURGEON:(gently tapping Maya on the shoulder) Ahh, Lieutenant… concerning   
that heart transplant… We were aware that Akagi-hakase's medical history shows that   
she can accept transplanted tissue from a very narrow range of individuals – in fact, there   
is at this time only one person in the GeoFront whose proteins her immune system would   
not reject outright. Namely you.  
  
MAYA:(deliberately maintaining calm with a superhuman effort of mind over fight-or-  
flight response hormones) I see. And the… stranger? From what I could see of her   
before the troopers shot her, I… (she nearly breaks down but catches herself) That is, I   
mean we seem to share a… similarity. Or, you know, it seemed at the time she just   
like…  
  
SURGEON:(calmingly. He is aware of how NERV works, knows he is threading on   
extremely thin ice here, and really does not want to complicate this screwery any more   
than he has to.) Yes, Lieutenant, that was what I was about to ask. A conclusive DNA   
test is still pending, but from random-sample analysis we could have our computers do on   
such short notice, she seems to b-e you. In every respect we could so far investigate. I   
realize that such a phenomenon could very well come under the jurisdiction of the   
Special Investigations Research Division, so, as Akagi-hakase's immediate subordinate…   
I hope I am getting the hierarchy correct, am I not?  
  
MAYA:(giddy with relief that she can finally do something to help) Uh – certainly. Is   
there something you want me to sign?  
  
As Maya signs her name to some papers the surgeon's assistant pushes at her, she can   
see the doppelganger's corpse being rapidly prepped for heart extraction next to the   
machine-sustained Ritsuko. As she catches the "other her"'s eyes on a gaunt, pain-  
deformed face, she thinks to herself:  
  
MAYA:(meditative, I. M.) The pain that woman must have endured! Who is she? Am   
I… here and there too… will I ever know what went on today?  
  
***  
  
GENDO:(we see nothing but his mouth) Not likely.  
  
A VOICE:(very forceful and ironic, savoring the moment of pure power its owner treats   
herself to like it was the richest chocolate cake she ever tasted. ) Bad guess, Ikari. You   
get one more chance.  
  
As she talks, the camera caresses her black-gloved hand holding a silvery sleek pistol.   
We see a little more – aha, it's taking place in Gendo's office. Behind the black-clad   
hand and black-draped wrist of the mystery lady, we see the Systema Sephirotica on the   
ceiling over the Commander's desk, and then pan out to see Gendo lying on the floor,   
staring up at her gun, with a lady clad all in black and twilight gray standing over him in   
a classic "Come here little boy, and I'll teach you some… manners" imposing pose that   
seems to come to her extremely naturally and unselfconsciously. She threatens   
commanders of dark and powerful organizations with a pistol the way a cat stretches,   
ballerinas dance, or Shaherezade tells tales. Even though we can't see her face from the   
POV just over her head, she has a figure that would make Shinji's friend Kensuke cream   
his jeans before he finished a single blink. Gendo, however, does not find it a comforting   
company.  
  
THE WOMAN:(In a flawless, sonorous, "You've been a bad boy, Ikari Gendo" voice)   
The crystal, Ikari. I trust I shan't have to demonstrate to you the folly of useless attempts   
at skullduggery.  
  
Gendo is somewhat crumpled, but unflappable. He is still hoping this is all a temporary   
setback – after all, what crystal could be more important than Rei and the nasty surprise   
he has planned for the old men with her!  
  
GENDO:(politely but tiredly, as if he wishes her all the best, but really can't spare that   
much time from his myriad concerns) This is hardly the time for it, Yantaro.  
  
YANTARO:(terse and laconic, a sudden change from her sensuous temptress routine)   
Make time. We had a deal, Ikari. Deals are kept by those that live to evolve. (With her   
demonic perception, she catches some subconscious change in him – he can't tell what –   
and lets out a bemused "hmmm!") Oh, that. No, don't bother to call security, Ikari. I   
made sure we would not be interrupted. Those Section two goons of yours are such   
stifling conversationalists, don't you agree? Now, concerning my pay? Business ethics,   
the value of trust, elementary game theory?  
  
GENDO:(the voice of reason itself – butter wouldn't melt in his mouth) Yantaro, surely   
even the most scrupulous ethicists have heard of a rain check.  
  
YANTARO:(striking words out like sparks of iron on granite) The crystal was my pay,   
Ikari. You've had a reprieve of 15 years. You shall pay now. And try not to squirm   
more than you can help, you'll ruin your sterling reputation.  
  
Ikari Gendo can see that he is out of his league here. But the game of trick and counter-  
trick, honed over long epics of shenanigans as first a pawn and then an adversary of   
SEELE, has by now become an essential element in his blood. He does not smirk. For   
all he knows of his current and long ago "business partner" it could very well be fatal.   
But… with a perfect poker face on his dark countenance, he smirks i-n-w-a-r-d-l-y. He   
knows something she doesn't. He hopes.  
  
GENDO:(deliberate) Very well. It seems you have me in somewhat of a… sticky spot.   
(sarcasm tinges his voice like a barely perceptible mist over a still lake.) Yantaro-  
Shirako-sama.  
  
The woman walks up to him, still keeping the gun trained at his gut. We cannot see her   
face, but we can see his. He is… apprehensive. Not twitchy, or anything so vulgar. But   
he can think of a much better scenario than having this charm queen pointing pistols at   
him at a critical moment.  
  
Before that face can register a change, she steps up to him and pats him on the cheek as   
if to say "Ooooooh, aren't you a cutie when you growl!" Her voice almost insidiously   
changes from terse, to sensual and relaxed again.  
  
YANTARO:(almost in a purr – of a leopard) Don't outsmart yourself, Ikari. I have a   
hunch you won't get out of the game that easily… Your fate appears to have quite a bit   
more plans for you before she lets you… attempt… your oh-so-exciting plans for the   
human species.  
  
Gendo stands there, wondering how much longer must he suffer looking unflappable   
and privately seethe with worry at the hidden agendas moving around him like branching   
fault lines, shifting the foundations of his plans in directions he cannot see.  
  
Finally, the tall woman breaks eye contact, moving towards the door. A barely   
perceptible sigh echoes in the strangely silent office. For half a second, it is the only   
sound. Then:  
  
YANTARO:(stands by door, ironically gestures with the pistol) Lead on, oh wise one.  
  
GENDO:(under his breath) grumble, grumble  
  
YANTARO:(musingly) You, know, Ikari, if that little flitting cherub Yui didn't snap you   
up, we might have had something, the two of us  
  
***  
  
In a darkened twisted corridor, two shapes are moving among the shadows. One shape   
is caught in the light his flashlight reflects off a white paint stripe from some insignia   
pained on a dark wall. From the orange-reddish glint of sunglasses and the beard we   
correctly assume it is the Commander of NERV.  
  
OTHER SHAPE:(we never see it outright, but from the voice, it's fruitful to assume this   
is Yantaro) What a time you picked to conserve GeoFront power, Ikari. Really, couldn't   
you ask SEELE to be more considerate when they're picking time to besiege you?  
  
GENDO:(visibly swallows all the responses he could make to this, then moves flashlight   
so he is just a dark shadow shape again) We're almost here. Come on. (opens door,   
outlining himself in an oval of light)  
  
YANTARO:(in her mock-sulky voice) You wouldn't be trying to pull one over on me,   
Ikari, would you? You do recall my little lesson from Antarctica, of course…  
  
Gendo, silent, steps through the door. She follows.  
  
***  
  
NERV infirmary, neural division. A caption before a closed door reads:  
  
(After Asuka's awakening)  
  
Misato is sitting on Asuka's bed, after a makeshift one had been wheeled in for the   
unconscious Shinji. The covered tray with Shinji's supper on it is standing by the main   
bed, at Asuka's night table. Misato is trying to hug Asuka. Asuka does not push her   
away (as she half dreads) but she stiffens up, refusing to accept the caress.  
  
MISATO:(gently) Asuka, please. I know it hurts. It will heal. I hurt a lot too, after   
Second Impact. Come on. You've got to eat, I know you're hungry. If you want to take   
something from here… (realizes offering Asuka food that she brought because she cared   
about Shinji is a BAD IDEA) … or I could dial the GeoFront kitchens and have them   
make anything you want…  
  
ASUKA:(speaks every word as if dropping a box of rocks on a sheet of rusted metal) So   
I'm awake. Big whoop. I should have died! Just… cleansed the world of me…   
Couldn't even do that right, figures…  
  
MISATO:(about to get angry before she remembers that this child has been more hurt   
than even she can know about) Asuka, do you see Shinji over there. You know, the one   
unconscious? You know that he didn't sleep for fifteen nights worrying over you? Look   
at him, Asuka. Look at him. He cannot be happy if you're suffering.  
  
ASUKA:(strangely quiet)… Fifteen days… (The quiet does not last long) Still, he's a   
retard. He always agonizes. It's his nature to whimper and moan like a sheep with a   
stomachache! Still… (her eyes stare into distance as her recent vision roars again before   
her eyes) … can't keep the Heir to NERV throne unhappy, can we…  
  
She buries her face in Misato, in the position that most guys would kill for. She doesn't   
cry. She would die first! But she just… holds on. Misato, stirred by instinct for which   
she herself can't account, wraps her arms around the girl's body and feels her is still   
shaking like a strummed string from sheer tension. Stifling a sob, Misato bends her head   
over Asuka, crooning something wordless. After several seconds she starts, remembering   
her father crooning the same tune over her at 3 years old.  
  
After a short while, when Asuka is sure she would not drown, she lets go. Her breathing   
is calmer now, and her teeth feel no urge to chatter. Her lips still tremble, ever so   
slightly.  
  
ASUKA:(I.M.) I know it'd kill me to fail again… but if I give up, it'll be on more than   
just me. (aloud) Well? What'd you bring me, oh, I'm sorry, what'd you bring the Snot-  
Faced Messiah over there? Hmmm, shrimp… ooooh, spare ribs… (sits atop the coverlet   
cross-legged with the tray on her knees and a determined expression on her face. The   
sort of expression that would convince a tank battalion not to mess with HER.)  
  
Misato is watching the tray emptying in disbelief. To tempt Shinji into eating at all, she   
brought a whole row of various dainties in the hope he was seduced by at least one sort.   
So now, that tray held enough delicacies to entertain Mikado's court! But it held them   
for a very short time before being convicted and executed by a ravenous flame-crowned   
valkyrie in a hospital gown.  
  
ASUKA:(daintily pausing to gulp down a whole bowl of hot & sour soup to wash down   
whatever she had in her mouth) Hey, Misato! Gimme your cell phone! When this idiot   
(gesture of a queen towards her faithful, if incontinent, puppy) wakes up again, he's   
gonna whine that you gave his food away!(snatches phone with the speed of a diving   
hawk) Now don't bother with your credit card number, I already hacked it out of your   
NERV files back when I moved in. Y'know, that was a nice pic of Kaji you had in your   
private notebook… did he often pose as a nude model in college?  
  
MISATO:(to herself) I have a feeling she'll live.  
  
***  
  
NERV infirmary operating theater, where the battle for Akagi Ritsuko's life draws to an   
apparent conclusion. The doctors are crowded around the patient, while Maya, left to her   
own thoughts, stares with horror at her double's disassembled corpse.  
  
MAYA:(introspective) Who is that me? She would have taken my life… but instead she   
gave hers to save… Risuko. And… if she wasn't here? If I was the only matching   
donor left!? Would I have sacrificed myself to save Akagi-sempai? (a pause as she is   
struck by an epiphany) I would, wouldn't I? I always knew how important she was to   
me, but now… I only just realized…  
  
Close-up of a surgeon's hand, putting the final stitch on an artery.  
  
SURGEON:(proud, beaming, and near death from exhaustion brought on by the sheer   
force of his focus) And it's pretty much routine after that, Miss Ibuki… (catches self)   
pardon me, Lieutenant. I am… a bit tired right now.  
  
MAYA:(absently) Oh, that's quite all right. (Dubious) Routine? From what I've   
heard…  
  
AN ASSISTANT:(in reassuring tone, as he waits till the surgeons need his help) Don't   
worry Lieutenant. If that bizzarro evil twin of yours didn't do us the favor of dropping   
by… well, better not to talk of that. As it is, though, the rest is just a lot of busywork.   
Re-attaching, sewing, propping up… soon all Akagi-hakase's organs will be right where   
the kamis put'em, with nothing lost but a night's sleep for us. You can just go and relax   
now, get some rest. This is the best team I ever worked with, we… (sees a doctor   
gesture) Yes sir. I apologize humbly, sir. Here you go, now…  
  
MAYA:(introspective; touches her dead double's bloody hand) I sacrificed… myself…   
and I'm still alive. And it looks like Akagi-sempai will live, too! But you… (pause, as   
she searches her feelings) … I would die for her… I never knew… is it... do I… (her   
eyes get bigger, then a smile breaks out like sun through rainy gray.) What matters is   
that Ritsuko will live!  
  
***  
  
GENDO:(morose) Must you h-u-m while you do that?  
  
YANTARO(singsong voice) Buuuuuut of cooooooourse, daaaaaaaaaaaaahling.  
  
(They are both at MAGI physical location, Gendo keeping a reluctant lookout, Yantaro   
playing up to her elbows in BALTHASAR's frontal cortex. CASPAR and MELCHIOR   
stand there gaping at the duo with dark holes in their towers, the frontal panels that used   
to protect their cortexes standing stacked against them. She is making motions like she's   
an Amish farmwife churning butter.)  
  
… Gooooot it!  
  
(Gendo's unexpected playmate yanks something multifaceted and glowing from inside   
the bio-computer's guts (or cortex convolutions, whatever the case may be). A black   
gloved hand opens the pouch on her belt, removing two others. The latest on glows   
yellow and the two she had in the pouch glow cyan and a combination of brick red with   
lilac purple.)  
  
… And for my next trick… I'll move the destiny of this planet in the right direction!  
  
Gendo looks at her as if to say "Woman, your style creeps me out". Unfazed, Yantaro   
takes the three crystalline… components, bringing their tips together. Even before they   
touch, the tips seem to… germinate.  
  
A close up of the three tapering ends of the three components. The crystal edges   
suddenly sprout shoots of spun liquid forms that can only have vague analogues in our   
concepts of petals, centipedes, fern leaves, tendrils, antennae, butterfly wings or coral   
reefs. Outwards they spin, blossoming, curling, branching, drifting as if with an unseen   
current, re-crystallizing and re-liquefying so swift they seem to be in both states   
simultaneously… shining with a kaleidoscopic array of brilliant hues, swirling around   
each other in an intricate dance, and softly chiming as they flow together – at the very   
edge of human hearing like a ghost of a dream song after you wake.  
  
Shortly, we are treated to the sight of a single perfect crystal born from the joyful union   
of its three ancestors. It shines with a hypnotic white light that occasionally gives out a   
spark of iridescent colors that human languages lack words to describe. Yantaro   
carefully passes a hand over it and the glow dulls as if the crystal has gone to sleep.   
Gendo adjusts his glasses and gives the same sort of grunt Ritsuko has heard from him   
during orgasm.  
  
GENDO:(drily) Well, that brings back memories. Now would you mind replacing these?   
(gestures at the MAGI covers) Wouldn't want to let Section Two know the GeoFront has   
acquired a burglar problem.  
  
YANTARO:(pouches the muted crystal) Sure, Ikari. Keep your pants on. Although…   
(assumes a "thinker" pose) Nah, ain't got the time. (Starts putting covers back on. Talks   
as she works.) You know, if you ever get Yui back, try doing it while you're still so…   
well preserved.  
  
Gendo's cell phone goes off.  
  
GENDO:(all business, talks into the mike) Ikari here. What is happening?  
  
***  
  
FUYUTSUKI:(on bridge) !!!  
  
Before he has time to say anything, we see Hyuga jump up behind him.  
  
MAKOTO:(almost screaming, veins bulge on his neck) We're detecting a massive power   
su…  
  
***  
  
In the MAGI room, Gendo and Yantaro see a flare of golden glow envelop the three   
MAGI towers. Gendo staggers back, desperately guessing what kind of trap SEELE just   
closed on him. He pulls out his own pistol.  
  
YANTARO:(smoothly covering him with hers) Nothing to fear, Commander! All's right   
with the world!  
  
***  
  
Tokyo-2. A JSSDF war-room – techs beat out staccato rhythms on computer consoles   
in an antipodal counterpart to NERV's own bridge. High muckety-mucks in somber   
uniforms are bent forward, eyes riveted on various holo displays.  
  
JSSDF GENERAL:(fingers clawing at emptiness) Reinforce! Reinforce, damn you!  
  
TECH:(he is grossly obese and his folds of blubber are quivering like melting jello) N-no   
use, sir! It's refusing all signals. It's like the computer itself has refused to go on!   
Nothing we can do when the equipment mutinies! Court-martial me if you want, it's   
true!  
  
GENERAL:(in a voice of a walking dead, jaws snapping like a steel trap once he's done)   
If these readings are true, we must prepare humanity's funeral pyre.  
  
***  
  
NERV bridge. Gendo, alone, comes out of an elevator.  
  
A TECH:(pumps fist in air) The El Riad and Paris devices just went off-line! That's the   
last of them!  
  
SHIGERU:(giddy with relief) Sir, we've used the codes in that file to intercept signals   
from all UN military satellites! MAGI-level bio-comps world over are going belly up!   
Whatever the MAGI did to those hackers, their machines are all suffering splitting   
headaches right about now! (confused, to himself) But how did our MAGI manage the   
processing power to take them all for a spin like that?  
  
GENDO:(looking over the bridge like a lion looks at his pride lands off a height)   
Fuyutsuki-sensei?  
  
SHIGERU:(sneaking a glance at the two) I probably don't want to know…  
  
FUYUTSUKI:(frowns at the things he's imagining, some of which are uncomfortably   
close to the truth) You're certain?  
  
GENDO:(serenely) What is certainty? But it seems… reasonable… to act as though   
NERV will live through this.  
  
  
  
Next episode: Why is the JSSDF assault, that seems to be Tokyo-2's only chance to   
dominate NERV and defeat Commander Ikari, been put on indefinite hold? See Major   
Misato Katsuragi lead a team of crack Section I operatives to match JSSDF on its own   
ground and obtain the secrets vital to NERV's survival. But who is this new partner   
she's been saddled with – by Commander Ikari's direct orders! And who is the   
mysterious enemy that turned her little squad's cat-and-mouse game with JSSDF into a   
fruition of a very personal vendetta?  
  
On the home front, see Asuka terrify random medical personnel. See Shinji evoke   
Asuka's… maternal side? Oh, he's in for it now! All on the next episode of Evangelion:   
The Apotheosis!  



End file.
